I heard footsteps tramping to the fence ahead of a plea: “Don’t stop pushing me, mummy.” A bolt clanked back, and the gate that used to let me into the woods swung inwards, revealing a large ruddy woman whose extravagantly herbaceous dress bared her muscular arms. “May I help you?” she rather less offered than said.

At the top of the sloping garden the little girl was trying to increase her arc. “Your daughter was saying we’d get lost,” I said.

“You mustn’t mind her. She worries for people, that’s all.”

“She needn’t worry we’ll be lost,” I said for the child to hear as well. “I’ve stayed in your house.”

“The gentleman means he came visiting, Francie.” Considerably lower the woman said “We’ve had enough of her talking to people who aren’t there. Who were you staying with?”

“My aunt. That was her studio.” I indicated the window, and a woman looked out as if I’d summoned her. “Who’s that up there?” I couldn’t help blurting.

“My other mummy,” Francie said with pride.

“It’s our bedroom at the moment,” the woman at the gate said. “We aren’t sure about the view.”

“Your little girl said it was a puzzle.”

“You can still call her our daughter,” the woman said with a look that searched for disagreement. “I don’t know why she would tell you that.”

“Because there are faces in the wood,” the little girl called. “Really there’s just one.”

“You can see all sorts of things at her age if you go looking for them,” the woman said. “Anyway, enjoy your walk. I’d better get back to my exercise.”

She meant the swing. Its repeated squeak grew fainter as Roy and I made our way along the sporadically gravelled path. At least she’d given me an idea what he must have thought he’d seen during Thelma’s wake. Of course children often saw faces in foliage. I seemed to recall doing so myself in Third Mile Wood, unless that had been a puzzle picture I’d pored over as a child.

Silence intermittently pierced by birdsong massed around the path as the green of the forest did: explosions of foliage, gatherings of moss and ivy on the tree trunks, elaborations of undergrowth. When I glanced back I couldn’t see a single house, as if the woods were impatient to be themselves. “Why’s it called Third Mile Wood?” Roy said.

“My aunt used to say it was because however far you thought you’d walked, there would still be a mile to go. Mind you, I don’t know how much she used to make up.”

“Like what?”